In the years immediately after the 1998 Federal Election, at which John Howard’s Coalition successfully won a mandate for introducing the GST, Federal Labor got stuck in a real policy communication rut. Sure, there was quite a bit of popular opposition to the new tax, and there were some very good reasons for Labor to continue to fight against it. Unfortunately for Labor supporters and indeed Kim Beazley’s political aspirations, as the years ticked by and Australia headed towards the 2001 election, the catch-cry of “rollback” started sounding regressive, tired, and somewhat unappealing to the average punter. One started to get the sense that the core premise of Labor’s economic platform was to take the country back in time three years, chronologically if not literally. Not really a good look, unless you’re Marty McFly.
And so it seems to be with Tony Abbott and the NBN. His mumblings are starting to sound like his policy on our telecommunications future is “rollback”; to regress, to move backwards. His latest hysterical suggestion to drop the NBN like a hot potato because of the floods seems patronising and misguided; a cry and a gasp for a headline. What right-minded government, having secured a mandate for an infrastructure project at two separate federal elections, and having already signed numerous contracts binding the nation to agreements to the tune of billions of dollars, would dump the project at the first sign of unexpected external financial issues, or at the suggestion of their political opponents?
One wonders what Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull really thinks about the National Broadband Network, and his leader’s cock-eyed approach to opposing it. What one doesn’t wonder is what Julia Gillard thinks about the Coalition’s “duh….rollBACK!?!!” broadband policy for the years heading toward 2013. Two thumbs up?
I think Abbott lacks vision and ambition. If you’re going to rollback the McGillicuddy Serious Party “Great Leap backwards” is the only way to do it. Ban all technology invented after 1893.
But overall I can barely muster the strength to say “meh”. Yes, Mr Negativity is also negative about… what was the question again?
Abbott doesn’t need to make sense. He doesn’t need to be honest, truthful, principled, etc. All he needs to do is win. Everything, absolutely everything he does is geared towards winning the next Federal election. And in achieving that end he will be utterly unscrupulous.
OTOH, the notion that NBN can be rolled back if he wins government is as unlikely as Labor ever removing Howard’s GST. The flood damage will pass. It is horrible and thousands of peoples’ lives have been devastated in one way or another – but guess what? I’m betting the vast majority of Queenslanders aren’t in Tony’s either or mode. In fact, I would suspect, if they had time to think about it at all at the moment, they would be suggesting the necessary repairs to telecommunications inftrastructure all over Queensland (and probably in other states where there has been massive flood damage) is a very good opportunity for the early installation of NBN.
I’m sure Abbott’s already worked this out, but right now, he doesn’t see any political advantage in it. When he does he’ll change his tune. Howard has taught him well.
ABC Gippsland has a question up (on Facebook too) about the possible floods levy, and all the local stooges, having just received their daily talking points from the Oz, are crying “dump the broadband”. It makes me cross. I just wish the NBN would turn into more of a physical fact more quickly, so that more people were using it and it became a tangible thing rather than something they read about.
Paul Burns; I agree! Repairing the flood damage definitely requires an early roll-out of the NBN to flood-hit suburbs like Milton, Auchenflower, Toowong, Indooroopilly. In alphabetical order.
Signed,
T.Rex of Auchenflower.
I’ve always taken it as a given that Abbott made Turnbull the communications minister for the sole purpose of making Turnbull attack a popular policy that Turnbull supports. If Turnball turns NBN into a political negative then good for Abbott, if Turnbull humiliates himself then good for Abbott. I’m just surprised no Labor ministers have tried goading Turnbull on this matter.
The idea that flood repair can substitute for NBN spending, and so keep the budget intact, runs into a little problem, and it is this. There’s hardly any NBN spending planned for and budgeted this year; it’s all going to happen in the future.
On the other hand, the flood repair has to happen right away.
And now that the NBN report is in and costed at $35bn or so, Abbott is quoting $50bn and pretending this is all public money …
Prime Ministers need to be able to deal with more than one thing at a time.
During the last weeks of the 2008 US Presidential campaign, when Lehmann Bros collapsed and the first serious shockwaves of what later became known as the GFC hit, candidate John McCain called upon candidate Obama to ‘suspend campaigning’ for 48 hours — the purpose being to hold an emergency economic summit in Washington.
Obama’s one-line reply was devastating, and, I think, did more to damage John McCain than any other single point in the campaign:
Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party, please take note…
And let’s not forget that the NBN is a key reason why the ALP is in power federally – what possible reason do they have to drop it?
I remember that line Mercurius.
I think Abbotts flining policies left and right hoping something will stick.
No-ones listening though, too busy either preparing or cleaning up
And let’s not forget also that given the serious damage to infreastructure and the requirement to totally rebuild some whole neighbourhoods, including in some cases roads, power, sewerage, the cost of rolling out NBN in these areas ought to fall. It would be two steps the wrong side of crazy not to rebuild with NBN access in mind.
Paul Burns @2 has summed up Abbot’s tactics very well. It is disappointing but true that hysterical screams of “disaster” will more likely win him office than clearly projecting well thought out policy.
As has been reported here earlier, “the NBN train has left the station”. In fact it is a few stops down the line now with contracts issued for the supply of cable. Should Tony’s tactics be successful & he does win office it will be to late to turn it around, he knows this very well as does Malcolm.
I suspect their real policy is to make some minor adjustments to the structure, change the name, then claim it as their own much better (insert your name here).
It makes far far more sense to say “cancel the JSF contract” than to say cancel the NBN. Not that I think we ought to reflexively seek savings from defence every time we talk about government priorities, but this particular one stinks badly.
Paul Burns / T.Rex, I agree that now would be a perfect time to begin replacing the damaged copper with fibre optic, didn’t Cambell Newman sometime ago mention that he was prepared to go fibre without waiting to the NBN rollout.
Paul Burns @2, Turnbull is cut from the same cloth as Smuggles, imo. He probably thinks he’ll be able to roll Smuggles before the next election and grab the Prime Ministership.
And as Fran says @11, Queensland and possibly northern NSW will need to rebuild infrastructure from scratch, so why scrap the NBN? It makes no sense from any viewpoint, with the notable exception of the Smuggles Set, who are hoping to make political capital out of it, but will do as Trevor suggests @12.
On this site there is generally a deep dislike of contrarian opinion, regardless of how informed. This is dislike is usually accompanied by demands that the writer justify their right to hold the opinion by detailing their authority to speak. A demand, of course, which is never made to those whose opinions follow site orthodoxy.
So, here goes. I have designed, built from scratch, and managed the infrastructure of two Internet Service Providers, both in central London. I was Managing Director and then for five years Technical Director at one, and later Head of Operations at the second, an AOL subsidiary, for a further two years. If that is not adequate credentials to hold a respectable opinion on this matter then I am damned if I know what would be.
If you want an informed opinion, rather than simply having your prejudices reinforced, then here goes: The NBN appears to me to be naught bar a Rudd vanity project which the current government lacks the cojones to scrap. It will drive out competition, suppress innovation and is a both a waste and misuse of taxpayers’ money. The plug should be pulled forthwith and the infrastructure sold off.
Much as I dislike the Liberals, Abbott is right.
Suggest we all take a big breath and think of what most of said when Tony became leader. Yet he almost won the unwinnable election and may well have done so if he had had a believable climate action plan. I have no desire to see Tony win but there have been times in the past when he has come up with insights that have impressed me even when I didn’t agree.
What really concerns me is the way Labor seems to be drifting back into Beazley land. Scared to push serious change. Unimpressive when they do actually talk about policy. A policy vacuum clinging on to power.
What neither Tony or Julia seem to understand was the country wanted real change when it elected Rudd and that Labor support started dropping dramatically as soon they dropped ETS without a replacement.
Julia is still behaving as though she believes the problem is political presentation, not a lack of substance.
What John Edmond @5 says. His management of Turnbull is straight from the Howard playbook – look at what he did to Ruddock.
On the floods and the NBN, I think Abbott is just putting a marker in the sand. If the damage to infrastructure does cause a local cost blowout, or serious local delays, he can say “I warned you” and play the well-worn theme of “they couldn’t organise pissup in a brewery”. OTOH if they don’t cause much problem then this particular bit of posturing will soon be forgotten in favour of others.
‘Counting’:why bother boasting your ever-so-fearsome qualifications if all you’re going to offer are empty assertions (after all, plenty of people as or more qualified than you think the very opposite). Content please!
Good on you CountingCats.
@16 CC: Recounting your experience of building and managing ISPs in London (congrats, BTW) does not substantiate your assertions about a national network in Australia. It does suggest you know more about this issue than you are letting on — so, why be coy about it?
How will the NBN “drive out competition” and “suppress innovation”? We don’t have competition in the defence forces or for sewage services, either. Do you see this as a problem? And what “innovation” will be “suppressed”, exactly? Need I point out that Australia’s telco sector is hardly a hotbed of world-beating innovation at present?
How will the NBN prove to be “both a waste and misuse of taxpayers’ money”.? Compared with what? How much money and opportunity is presently wasted by the second-rate internet infrastructure we presently make do with, and the copper wires that are presently rotting in the ground?
What plug? What infrastructure? It hasn’t been built yet! And what remains in public hands to be sold off? To whom? For what public benefit?
If your assertions are true, they can be substantiated by an explanation and evidence — your resume is not required, impressive as it may be.
CountingCats
Re: Credentialism: The credentials need to be pertinent. Your credentials, assuming they are as you say, are no more relevant that those of a person running a rental; car franchise are to traffic planning and road building.
If you want to say something on NBN you need to come up with something we could not have found by simply re-reading the latest Turnbull press release, especially since the release would have been written with Abbott’s hand up Turnbull’s back. Have you noticed that Abbott is never drinking water when Turnbull is speaking? I have.
You need to show that you’ve taken the trouble to read the voluminous stuff on NBN that has already been posted here, and are ready to deal in a thoughtful and novel way with those defences, adducing new data that supports what you say. If you want to be more than a gadfly, and want serious discussion to follow, that’s the way.
“Much as I dislike the Liberals, Abbott is right.”
LOL!!!
Concern troll is concerned.
Sam @ 6: Stop it, stop it, you’re being too rational.
Alister @ 9: That’s a very good point and worth underscoring. It’s very doubtful that we would have a Gillard Labor Government today, with the support of the independents, if not for the NBN.
CountingCats @ 16: I don’t doubt that there are some decent, credible arguments one could mount against the NBN, but the recent flooding is not one of them.
With respect to competition/innovation, it is difficult to see any telco in this country (with the exception of Telstra – which has a bogus, inflated position of strength in the industry) having the cojones to implement something like the NBN by itself. If we wait for the telco indudstry to deliver something like the NBN, we will be waiting until 2174 or later – and it’s probably worth highlighting that Australia’s geography makes this an exercise that government is uniquely equipped to handle.
On the main thread: does anyone remember Naomi Kline the shock doctrine. Of course its time for cuts according to venerable Neo-Con /liberal scripts,people are distracted.
Why does Tony hate the workers and businessmen who travel the very same roads as he does? Shame, shame, shame.
http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/nbn-deal-is-worth-300m-to-dy-company/
@ 16 CC 14 lines of trying to justify why you should be listened to, then 5 lines of unsubstantiated clap trap. An obvious troll.
If you know what you are talking about, as you claim, provide some facts. You may be surprised that others will engage meaningfully. You may also be surprised to find that others, including myself have a lot of knowledge in this area. But lets not turn it into a pissing contest over who has the more credential on their CV. BTW mine is transmission systems D&C, Satellite systems and MD of a public telco.
Let’s face it, Tony knows full well Murdoch will give him maximum support for his constant attacks on the NBN. It’s a threat to Foxtel and his patron just hates it.
The Newscorp propaganda machine will immediately begin to spew out material giving the nod to Abbott and his wise words, as the chain was just pulled.
@27 cheers Trevor — I’ll add my yellow stream to the, err, “mix” — managed a national joint data project to reconfigure data exchanges from the PSTN and mobile number databases between Telstra, Voda, Optus and Hutch. So, unlike CC, my “credentials” FWIW are based on dealing with telcos in Australia.
Nothing I saw in the years of round-table meetings between the best and brightest minds our home-grown telco industry could muster gave me any confidence that all that “competition” and “innovation” in our domestic industry is going to produce world-class internet infrastructure any time this side of the next ice age.
That’s not a personal slight on the people involved. That’s directed at the way the telco industry in Australia operates. Optus’ continued use of snails, turtles and chimpanzees in its advertising is not a metaphor.
Oh, he’s right, for sure, but is he correct?
The funny thing is, Mercurius (and Counting Cats), that when Telstra was called the PMG Dept (and was a publicly-owned monopoly) it was a hotbed of world-beating innovation.
Just for a kickoff, they built a really good hardware phone encrypter.
The idea of rolling back previous reforms is not toxic to political parties witness roll back of ‘work choices’ or both the dismantleing of medicare under the rectionary coalition of it’s subsequent reintroduction by Labor.
So what is at issue is the specific ‘roll back’…
what we need to attack is the concept of subsidising choices that risk human lives (lets give money to businesses and residents in high risk areas)for short term political gain against future proofing via the NBN.
Counting Cats, your background is impressive and that alone should get me to agree with you.
However, since I’m a bit slow could you please explain some of your points?
You say that
How will the NBN drive out competition?
How will it supress innovation?
Because in my field I use the internet everyday. It’s changed over the past decade from being a little useful to becoming a cornerstone of how we do our day to day business. In my research it saves me weeks of effort and wasted time every year easily.
I can see Abbott gaining traction with his calls for the NBN to be scrapped. Oddly enough I see News Ltd are in lock step with that view.
But I can’t see the issue. Faster internet is needed to give us the edge in competition and to save time and resources. (I just spent a couple of days downloading a large work related file that should have been done in minutes. Think of all that wasted energy.)
Good post, Guy.
As David Marr pointed out on The Drum, around 70% of Australians support the NBN (though you wouldn’t believe it to read the media commentary).
Why isn’t the press gallery breathlessly pointing out the perils of obstructionism, as they did when Labor was in opposition? Then again, I can’t remember the press gallery screaming for FOIs and a cost-benefit analysis for the Iraq war……sorry, I forgot, one standard for the Right another for the Left.
Funny, but I recall the NBN being a bit of a major election issue some four years ago. Something that was democratically decided, and then reconfirmed only six months ago. Wassamatter, Tones doens’t like democracy?
Paul, that is one of the vilest comments I have ever read about an Australian politician.
But the vileness isn’t yours. It is his. You have captured the essence of the man.
In those words you have expressed exactly what I think is true about Tony Abbott.
I cannot think of a word you have written that I would want to change.
@ 16
Newsflash: If you say any of the government pump-priming ‘shovel ready projects’ carried out during and after the GFC were ‘vanity projects’ for Rudd (or Gillard as per the schools), that doesn’t mean you are contrarian.
Seriously, there’s at least one progressive wonk who comments here, who fully supported the stimulus yet has concerns about the NBN, and I don’t recall him going down the path of this reductio ad absurdum. And he generally hates Rudd.
I repeat, it’s not contrarian to repeat Liberal spin aimed at conflating economic policy ‘mistakes’ with the supposed personal failings of ALP prime ministers. It’s actually called agreeing with Opposition spin.
Christopher Hitchins doesn’t believe Barack Obama is trying to nationalise the American health industry, for example.
@16
To emphasis that this blogs has contributors from a broad range of occupations I’ve spent 15 years in IT on the app development side. We’ve seen the death of client server, the rise of n-tier and now it’s clouds, virtualisation and iSCSI and the like. And it’s all been driven by the network and it’s all just getting faster. You’d better get a pretty snazzy fibre backend because you’re gonna need it. The backend is where all the processing power is and you don’t want network latency degrading your blindingly fast app.
And of course in a country like Australia there is no way to get that network without govt. involvement.
counting Cats – can you explain wtf doing anything as a wideboy in Central London or anything for AOL has to do with informed opinion on NBN in Oz.
Thanks
And so Rupert’s little helpers predictably begin the new year round of NBN bashing.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/abbott-sees-the-on-nbn-in-our-darkest-days/story-e6frezz0-1225991293610
Greg M @ 36,
As an old theatre mate of mine used to say, “It’s yours. Spread it round.”
Darn! It’s the next morning, and here I was hoping CC was going to enlighten us about how the NBN can be done faster, cheaper, better, and without taxpayer support. Cos he’s set up a couple of ISPs, so therefore he would know how to build a national next-generation network.
C’mon CC, yer breakin’ my heart! Only *your* superior insight can save the Australian taxpayer $35 bazillion jillion squillion dollars! Don’t keep it a secret, now!
@Mercurius, I think CC’s brane exploded at the revelation that the larvyprodders commentariat is not actually exclusively composed of taxeaters. Not sure how long it takes to put exploded branes back together these days…
“C’mon CC, yer breakin’ my heart! Only *your* superior insight can save the Australian taxpayer $35 bazillion jillion squillion dollars! Don’t keep it a secret, now!”
Keep up Mercurius! According to the Tones it is $50 bazillion jillion squillion dollars!
WTF – Why is anyone on this site even attempting to justify their experience or knowledge to CC? Why even bother responding to a post which is nothing but mouthing off the inane thought processes of his/her preferred party? (Say I in responding to the post)
I’ve used a bathtub before; the QLD floods should never have happened!
It is depressing though how quickly some are to lap up Tony’s nonsense. I was at my parents’ place the other day – they are Daily Telegraph readers – and my mother was quick to say that the NBN should be scrapped to pay for the flood damage.
So I asked her whether, given that the copper network is a century or so old, and given that telephone cable was in all likelihood needing to be replaced on a large scale due to the floods, she thought it was a good idea to replace the copper with more copper when fibre optic cable was available.
She went very quiet after that.
bmitw @ 47. This is what I was concern/trolling/cassandraing about earlier.
I may have been misunderstood but I’m completely worried that everyone’s going to be taken in by Tony’s spin. Especially when the NBN is a good thing as a whole.
I know where Counting Cats is going with the whole disruptive tech meme. It will put some people out of work the same way as horseshoe makers were put out by car technology. And I’m not being flippant about it, it will pretty much change or completely do away with my occupational field.
Which will suck. For me. But as a whole it’s going to change things or the better. It’s not all about faster access to Facebook, Youtube and pron.
I think Phoney – and Malcolm for that matter – have realised the NBN will represent a major nation building achievement. and genuine productivity reform. Even some at the Oz think so.
As such, they’re desperate to scotch it before its bedded down. They oppose it because its a rolled-gold winner.
And worse, it does more for rural Australia than that useless false limb the coalition calls “the nationals” has achieved in 40 years.
Tones is desperate alright. Whether its wise to appear so is another question, well raised by this post.
Tones missed an opportunity here. If he wasn’t so anti NBN he could have made a lot of ground by suggesting to the ALP that Queensland be first for the NBN since the infrastructure needs to be rebuilt. If it were a success then he could have relabelled it a Coalition success, if it failed he could have declared it ALP mis-management.
Now he’s a slave to the anti NBN narrative. It’s going to be very tough for him to break out of that.
wilful @35, Smuggles hates democracy.
tssk, I really think it’s time for the government to take a big stick to Smuggles and his NBN shite! Queensland needs its infrastructure replaced and Smuggles is saying that second rate is good enough.
His roof and bathroom analogy is total crap as well, if you think about it for a nano second. If your roof blows off, you can bet your bottom dollar a new bathroom will be a no brainer. And of course, you’re going to replace it with stuff you’ve scabbed from the tip!
Every time Smuggles opens his gob a torrent of shite spews forth. Rooftops-shouting!
Fair comment, especially since he obviously came with a sockpuppet seconder. That’s practically a guarantee that what he had wasn’t worth reading.
Still, contrary to his(?) claim, we are a generous lot here.
Yep Jane @ 51. It’s one of the great mysteries of the world why the ALP doesn’t do this. See also the roof insulation thing where less people died during the scheme than before it.
Of course seeing how Bob Brown was verballed and misquoted earlier this week I can see why they might pause.
We shouldn’t have to be sticking up for the ALP, they should be doing it themselves. (And I think Anna Bligh’s done really well at this over the past week.)
Bugga. Still nothing from CC. Now $157 kerspillion bajillion yibbida-yibbida-wazillion taxpayer dollars will be wasted, all because CC was too modest to share hir cunning plan for how to build an NBN using nothing but two onions, some cellotape and lashings and lashings of competition and innovation.
Sad, isn’t it?
The best way to encourage competition and innovation is to basically take society apart piece by piece leaving some of the more interesting bits lying about, and leave people to work out how to put it back together again.
Necessity is the mother of invention and all that and your model of change post social apocalypse will be absolutely discontinuous. Existing structures radically cramp innovation because the temptation is to stay pretty much with what works, limiting innovation to fairly minor incremental change.
Doh, now I get it! ‘Copper Cables’ have replaced the White Picket Fence.
So for the floods Tones policy will be to issue Be Alert but not Alarmed fridge magnets.
Tones is getting roasted in today’s SMH Letters page.
Huzzah!!!
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/broadband-billions-to-keep-rolling-20110119-19wq9.html
…even more interesting, CMMC, with a peg on my nose I had a read of the The Austrlian‘s letters page and couldn’t find any published letters of support for Abbott’s grandstanding.
Is this Abbott’s Great Big New Blunder?
I wish the media – prompted by the opposition – would stop giving the misleading impression that the NBN will cost the government $43 bn. The government only proposes to spend a bit over half of that amount.
Maybe will need to stage a public rally on behalf of the NBN. Sure, it’ll be nerdy, but some of us bloggers need the vitamin D.
Ginja, the media will never stop trying to mislead us about the NBN. After all, it’s going to destroy their business model.
tssk @53, sigh! Yes I’d forgotten that lot of urgers and touts. I guess Gillard could try to get some time on the 7.30 Report.
@54, don’t forget the baked bean tins, it won’t work without them. Oh and don’t forget to invent “Hello.”
One can only hope so, Mercurious.
David @ 54….it also mitigates a lot of their power. The electronic media and arts get a lot of flack from traditional media for three reasons.
1. It’s competition. Every moment you spend in front of the computer is time stolen from spending time with their medium.
2. It opens them up to competition from amateurs. (Does anyone remember Elton John a couple of years ago saying the internet needed to be ‘closed’ for a couple of years? It’s like that with newspapers and tv. They can’t believe that any old person can have an audience now.)
And most importantly….
3. It’s not a passive medium. In the past the medium was the message and they could set the agenda. It’s a lot tougher for the media to play kingmaker now.
It’s not just about business. It’s about influence.
@61, 63:
I’m not so sure the media business model will be “destroyed”. Disrupted, certainly — but some will adapt and emerge, dare I say it, more influential and powerful than ever.
The internet technologies are/will be the pervasive medium for global-scale human social and economic interaction in this and future centuries.
In fact, the completion of an NBN will unleash on an unprecedented scale all the things our neoliberal friends love so much – “competition” and “innovation” by the truckload.
The NBN will grease the wheels of capitalism in this country like nothing before it. I can’t for the life of me understand why the “party of business” are so keen to die in a muddy ditch to stop it…
@64, ideology and envy, Mercurious. The Smuggles Set, enabled uncritically by their urgers in the Murdochracy, will mindlessly oppose anything the government proposes no matter what, and envy, because they didn’t think of it first.
Ys, the MSM will not be destroyed by the NBN. It will exploit all the new opportunities which arise out of it.
My prediction. Smart phones will become massively cheaper, soon, and demand for wireless spectrum will go through the roof.
Consequence 1. We will need to get as much stuff off the wireless spectrum as we can, and to do that will require a massively faster alternative – NBN.
Consequence 2. We will still need to expand the wireless infrastructure to cope. To do that we will probably need to install the stuff the Coalition was pushing as the NBN alternative. When this happens, the Coalition will have something of an out. They will say that they were right in proposing that infrastructure.
Second prediction: The rate of increase in demand from these smart phones will outstrip system capacity, and there will be a lot of angry consumers out there.
Consequence 1. The coalition will blame the Government for not putting in their wireless option, and that’s the cause of the problem.
Consequence 2. The Coalition will say that they never really opposed the broadband, and that it was the government’s failure and dilly dallying in producing a business plan that caused the delay.
Marks @ 67 – wireless spectrum and coverage is already insufficient for demand, especially with some providers – eg. vodaphone. Because of the way the debate has been framed as either fibre or wireles it’s been rather misleading. We need more of both. How much of each is up for debate, though personally I find lack of wireless infrastructure more limiting to how well I work more than limited broadband speeds because it fairly heavily ties me down to where, and as a result when, I can work. I won’t say no to better wired speeds though
Much as I hate to post any link to the OO:
Vint Cerf ‘jealous’ of Australia’s $36 billion broadband plan
Vint Cerf, who helped develop email and TCP/IP technology, told The Australian during a visit to Sydney yesterday he thought the NBN was a “stunning investment”.
“I continue to feel a great deal of envy because in the US our broadband infrastructure is nothing like what Australia has planned,” he said.
mercurious@64, Australian capitalism doesn’t do innovation and visionary stuff, we offshore that. We’re about digging stuff out of the ground. The Liberals are about protecting the rent seekers and making sure local business doesn’t need to change from its old ways